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Album review: A tasty new-music sampler from Common Sense

Joshua KosmanMay 1, 2019

Common Sense Composers’ Collective, “Spark” Photo: Innova Records

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The Common Sense Composers’ Collective is a loose-knit, wonderfully eclectic new-music cooperative of eight composers who reap the benefits of synergy by commissioning a bunch of pieces at once for a single performing ensemble. The latest project — a suite of string music for San Francisco’s dynamic Friction Quartet — is documented on a new release titled “Spark,” and it’s a doozy.

The music here covers a wide swath of stylistic ground, from the gently meditative work of Marc Mellits and Melissa Hui to the exuberant funk of Randall Woolf’s neo-Beethoven party track “No Luck, No Happiness.” John Halle creates a polymetric tapestry out of melodic fragments from the work of Thelonious Monk, while Belinda Reynolds’ “Open” strings together repetitive phrases of different lengths like the soundtrack to a moody, unseen travelogue.

There is, in other words, something here to please every palate, all assembled with wit and tenderness, and brought vividly to life by Friction.